Lies My Mirror Told Me

by Wendy Harmer

I just had this incredible epiphany. It was like, "hang on a you mean, I get a microphone, the lights come on me, people listen to what I have to say and I get paid!" There was no going back.

Wendy Harmer has had an extraordinary life.

From being born with a severe facial deformity, to performing as a stand-up comedian, a national television host and then going on to be the highest paid woman in the cut-throat world of Sydney FM radio ... her tale of overcoming adversity is told with her trademark frankness and celebrated wit.

Starting life in rural Victoria, with a teacher father and teenage mother, Wendy describes her time in remote one-teacher, one-room country schools. A way of life which has all but disappeared. As her father moved around the state to take up new postings as headmaster, Wendy, as the "funny looking" kid often in the wrong colour school uniform, developed strategies to find new friends and fit in.

Her young mother found life particularly difficult and left the family home at the age of 26 when Wendy was ten, the oldest of four children, leaving her father to raise them on his own.

It wasn't until Wendy was well into her teens that she had the final reconstructive facial surgery that had long promised to transform her from a "witch" into a "princess", but fell agonisingly short.

Somehow, despite her initial setbacks and emotional turmoil, Wendy showed the strength of character to carve her own way in the world. Today her face and her name are recognised by millions of Australians.

Wendy began her working life as a journalist on the Geelong Advertiser and then worked for the Melbourne Sun, where, on assignment, she stumbled across the alternative comedy and cabaret scene in the early '80s and her life took an improbable turn.

From her first tentative steps on Melbourne's tiny stages in comedy revue, she struck out as a solo performer. As our first woman stand-up comedian, she would make her mark in London and at the Edinburgh Festival before coming home to entertain us for the past four decades on stage, in print, television and broadcasting.

Wendy's career includes many "firsts". Notably as the host of The Big Gig on ABC TV and as a headliner in FM radio. She is also known as a prolific magazine, newspaper columnist and best-selling author.

In Lies My Mirror Told Me Wendy reflects on her life... how she became fearless, funny and, finally, found true love, is one of the most unlikely success stories you will ever hear.

Genres: Nonfiction, Australia, Biography Memoir, Audiobook

Audible Audio

Published November 1, 2023

About the author

Wendy Harmer is an Australian author, writer, radio show host and comedienne. A former political journalist, Wendy is the author of seven books for adults: It's a Joke, Joyce (1989), Backstage Pass (1991), Love Gone Wrong (1995), So anyway-- : Wendy’s words of wisdom (1997) (a collection of her weekly columns from The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend Magazine), Farewell My Ovaries (2005), Nagging for Beginners (2006), Love and Punishment (2006), and Roadside Sisters published in April 2009.

Harmer's books have been described as being in the genre of Chick lit. They are popular light novels and very humorous.

Wendy Harmer has also written a series for young readers called the Pearlie in the Park . They are bestsellers in Australia and have been published in ten countries around the world. The animated Pearlie series has screened on Australian TV.

I Lost My Mobile at the Mall (2009) is Wendy's first novel for teens.

She has written for numerous Australian magazines and has been a contributing columnist for Australian Women's Weekly, New Weekly, The Good Weekend and HQ.

Wendy contributed to Marie Claire’s What Women Want in 2002, My Sporting Hero edited by Greg Gowden which was published by Random House Australia and a volume of The Best Ever Sports Writing . . . 200 Years of Sport Writing. She also wrote the libretto for Baz Luhrmann’s Opera Australia production of Lake Lost.

Reviews

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve liked Wendy Harmer and her no-bullshit attitude since watching The Big Gig and through the years right up to her co-hosting ABC Radio Sydney breakfast with Robbie Buck. It was great to listen to her narrate her audiobook memoir that started with her pretty terrible childhood and then went on to chronicle her impressive career. She makes the rest of us look like dull unachievers as she’s had a crack at everything from stand-up, tv, radio, theatre and writing, to activism and online news publishing, what a legend. She doesn’t shy away from telling us about past relationships, gross co-workers and drug use although I felt there was a fair veil of privacy around all that which I can understand. It sounds like she has done well to reconcile the way her parents treated her and her siblings and I have a lot of admiration for that. It’s great that the story has a happy ending in that she has a loving, supportive husband and two children and she lives in Gods own country on the Northern Beaches.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up watching you on tv and listening to you on radio. Her sense of humor shines through in this book. Her childhood and what she went through gave her the resilience she has in life today. Im so glad you met the love of your life and I agree 100 % about being a surfing widow. I hear you !!

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a life. Harmer overcame a lot of early adversity and took herself on a journey which was varied and remarkable. Well worth the read.

[Cindy]

Amazing lady!!

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because it was written by Wendy Harmer and because of the characteristic we have in common: cleft lip and palate.

You know, she's the only woman with a cleft that I know of in public life. Cleft lip and palate is not that uncommon, affecting 1 in 800 births. If so, where do we all go? I know of a couple of male (but not female) actors, no politicians, no business people, no teachers, no doctors. People with clefts always recognize each other with a quick glance, close attention to the speech, a heartbeat of recognition, but nothing said.

But Wendy Harmer, as one of Australia's most recognized comedians, is upfront about her cleft, having told her story on television and radio programs many times. In this book, she has the time and space to talk about it without her story being shaped by an interviewer's questions, and to place it in context among the other varied aspects of her career, now that she, like me, is in her late sixties....

I hadn't realized just how varied Harmer's career has been. She started off as a journalist, first with the Geelong Advertiser in the country, then working for The Sun in Melbourne during the 1970s. ...

Here the book becomes much more your standard 'celebrity autobiography'. I recently saw an interview with comedian Wil Anderson and he spoke about how fundamental Wendy Harmer is to Australian comedy, and even more so women's comedy, and it's writ large in this long roll-call of people that she has worked with, both in Australia and overseas.

Despite such a varied and full career, there is an element of regret and nostalgia near the end of the book as times change, the media environment becomes crasser and 'women of a certain age' become less bankable as media personalities. Her father has died; her relationship with her mother is wary; one sibling has died while another is estranged in the way of families. But Harmer herself is in a good place.


For my complete review, please visit
https://residentjudge.com/2024/04/10/...

[Jayne Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like I've been on an incredible, inspiring journey.
This book was a Christmas present from my Uncle. He gives me a biography or autobiography every year 🥰
Whilst reading this book I often had to stop and google a few images and people! It was also a great walk down lane finding an episode 1 of The Big Gig on YouTube!
I didn't live in Sydney so never heard Wendy on radio but I always enjoyed seeing her on TV.
I was a bit worried when I found out Wendy's favourite League club was Manly - then relieved to find out it isn't so much anymore lol!
I'm so impressed with the resilience and positivity that she displays despite having a bit of a tough upbringing. But would Australia have the amazing Wendy Harmer if she didn't have the childhood that she experienced?
This book is a real gem. Maybe my only little issues was the slight jumping around but I don't think I would have enjoyed it if it stuck to a rigid timeline. It made sense to keep some sections together, eg her time at breakfast radio was mostly separate to meeting her wonderful (well, he sounds wonderful and perfect for her) husband Brendan. I also felt better about my own house being full of crazy random travel souvenirs and too many books! I do not live in a display home, and it is always refreshing to hear that smart, clever comedians don't either.
As an Aussie, I feel proud that we have produced such an amazing, hard-working, funny talent that is Wendy Harmer
I'd also like to thank my Uncle Lawrence for yet another great Christmas autobiography! Even though I've known of Wendy Harmer for years, I probably wouldn't have read this book.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading the account of her childhood and the impact on her siblings is harrowing; the accounts of various TV shows and radio programs and those missed and the list of names, dull to those not interested in names of entertainers. If this was only about family and finding happiness in self, it’d be a four star from me.

[Ros Gaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining memoir from a brave and remarkable woman, who went through huge hardships as a child, and became the doyen of highly paid FM radio in Sydney, via The Big Gig.

[Gayle Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps 4.5 stars

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a trip down memory lane. I first came across Wendy Harmer, hosting The Big Gig comedy show on the ABC in the early 1990s. But she's lead a fascinating life and tells it with great humour. One of the best memoirs I've listened to this year.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as an audiobook, I enjoyed listening to the author read themselves. This was an interesting account of Wendy Harmer from childhood through to now. At 11 hours it was a little tedious hearing someone talk about themselves for that long, but perhaps because I listened to a lot of it in one hit on a long road trip. Harmer has had some amazing experiences and a life that had highs and lows. It was an interesting read.

[Alice Jones1234567 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wendy Harmer’s memoir, Lies My Mirror Told Me starts off with her parents’ and grandparents’ stories and her childhood in the Australian bush. I especially enjoyed this first part, because it seemed so evocative of the era and made me realise how much times have changed.

She was unlucky in some ways, but in other ways she had a freedom and experiences of solid friendship that I don’t think kids get today.

Parts of the story are quite harrowing, not just because of her hare-lip but also because of the actions of both her parents and stepmother Alison. I wonder if her sense of humour was a way of coping with the difficulty of her circumstances growing up.

Much of the book is dedicated to her career from the late 70s through to modern times. Parts of this were interesting and insightful, for example her time as a journalist in the 70s showed me how women were treated then and how few of them were in the workforce.

But I felt this part of the book was a bit less interesting to me, perhaps because I didn’t know many of the cultural reference points (names, tv shows, songs etc). It might be better for an audience that remembers popular culture from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s.

Overall I enjoyed this book and would recommend it, especially to people who are about 50 plus.

[Wide Eyes, Big Ears! · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wendy Harmer is a much-loved Australian comedian and media personality and I’m sort of gobsmacked that I didn’t know anything about her chaotic family and challenging upbringing. Wendy’s neglectful father taught in a series of one-teacher schools in country Victoria and responsibility for her three younger siblings fell to her when their mother attempted suicide and left the family until Wendy was driven out by the psychopathic stepmother her father remarried. Wendy also tackles the challenges of being born with a severe cleft palate and details her career as a journalist, comedian, TV and radio presenter in male dominated workplaces.

Despite the emotional rollercoaster, this is a positive story. There’s a lot of her trademark humour here but it’s her willingness to take risks and her resilience that really shine through. This is not her first book and her clear, accomplished writing style really showcases her personality and life. Wendy narrates the audiobook herself and does the perfect job.

[Cath Carkeet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. As a memoir Wendy Harmer recounts her life -- the whole gamut from her childhood in rural Victoria, with a teacher father and young mother to her current life in Sydney. There are a lot of insights into her life – her struggles with her physical appearance – cleft lip and palate, her mother’s departure, her stepmother, to her embracing a life in comedy.

As Wendy is round about my age, I really enjoyed the descriptions of 70s food, fashion etc. Another good aspect of the book is her frequent acknowledgement of the traditional custodians of the land in the various places she lived (in Victoria, early in the book) and the impact of colonisation on their lives and on the physical environment.

You probably have to like and admire Wendy Harmer for maximum enjoyment of this book. It’s well-written honest funny and cleverly observed.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really interested to learn about the life of Wendy and I did for the first 20% (which was a pretty awful upbringing with how her parents dealt with the cleft lip and palate and also how they laid so much generational trauma into all of the kids) and then a lot of the rest of the book sort of became short stories and jokes, which lost me a little bit.
I was really hoping to get a bit of an insight into radio, but not a lot of the book covered it - but I guess to be fair to Wendy, much of her career was separate to radio.
The one thing that really stuck out to me was the story she retold of Precious Bane by Mary Webb at the very end of the book. I thought that wrapped up the book really beautifully.

[Nat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an entertaining memoir from a pioneering entertainer in Australia.

Wendy Harmer (nee Brown) grew up in trying circumstances. Born with a cleft palate, her early life was dominated by poor treatment and ongoing surgery. Her mother also left while Wendy and her three siblings were young. Enter Alice, the housekeeper and dad's new partner who subjected the children to years of phycological abuse.

Wendy is incredibly interesting, from being the only woman in the newsroom, to an early entry on the stand-up comedy, then television scene when many women weren't front and centre, to radio, to fiction writing, is there anything she can't do.

A solid 3 stars for me.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was great to hear Wendy reading her own book in audio format and I enjoyed hearing about her life, her work and her loves. Wendy is a poster child for resilience and for what having a firm belief in yourself can accomplish in life.

[Robyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfinished audioboook. Wayyyyy too long

[Tessa Wooldridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wendy Harmer’s memoir, Lies My Mirror Told Me, unfolds in a largely linear fashion, initially chronicling her childhood years as her family traipsed from one posting to the next at the whim of her father’s employer, the Victorian Education Department. It then moves through her adolescent years, which included surgery on her ‘bilateral cleft lip and palate’, and on into adulthood and her various careers in the media and the arts.

Harmer’s birth family comprised parents Margaret Wicks and Graham Brown (our classroom teacher in Grade 6 if memory serves me rightly), and three younger siblings. During the family’s Bendigo years, it became apparent that Harmer’s mother was deeply unsettled. She drifted in and out of the family’s life before leaving altogether and returning to her home state of Tasmania. Meanwhile, Harmer’s father continued to live life ‘as if he were a single man’. (A second marriage for Graham Brown, to a woman Harmer describes as delivering ‘mind-bending’ psychological abuse, would follow.)

Skip forward to Harmer’s seventh decade. From this vantage, Harmer can see both her mother and her father with new clarity. She is glad she and her mother ‘found our way back to each other’ but remains ‘wary’ of her mother’s sometimes changeable recollections and revelations. She recognises her father’s flaws, but values the ‘deep, uncritical acceptance’ he offered her.

By the end of Harmer’s memoir, her father has died, as has one of her brothers, and her sister is estranged. But she now has her own nuclear family with husband Brendan Donohoe and two adult children. On the second occasion she met Donohoe, he walked her to her car at the end of the evening and, writes Harmer, ‘a thought came to me unbidden I’m home.’ They were engaged within three months. Newlywed at the age of 39, Harmer was told she was ‘too old’ to have children. Happily, that medical opinion was incorrect.

Wendy Harmer is a woman in perpetual motion. In between the stories of her childhood and the eventual formation of a joy-filled family of her own, Harmer’s memoir tracks her eventful comedy career. The book’s pages serve up a veritable ‘who’s who’ of the Australian (and international) comedy scene.

The names will be familiar even to people who’ve never been to live stand-up but who have lived through the era of The Gillies Report and The Big Gig, and who have read enough news to know about the comedy festivals in Edinburgh, Melbourne and Montreal. Names like Richard Stubbs, Max Gillies, Tracy Harvey, Jill Kitson, John Clarke, Mary-Anne Fahey, Peter Cook and Harmer’s comedy idol, Joan Rivers, pepper Harmer’s generous account.

While touring Australia and internationally, and while creating, hosting and staring in shows for television, Harmer also began writing books. (She now has over 40 titles under belt including the 17-book Pearlie series which begins with Pearlie in the Park.)

Harmer’s radio career began at Melbourne’s 3AK before she moved to ABC Radio National, Sydney’s 2DayFM, and back to the ABC for a breakfast program. Harmer became, at one point, ‘the highest paid woman in radio’ in Australia.

Harmer also turned her hand to publishing and editing. With Jane Waterhouse and Caroline Roessler, she set up The Hoopla, an online news site focused on ‘news through the eyes of women’. Although the cash-strapped site would close after four years, Harmer declares it ‘the enterprise I loved the most’.

Lies My Mirror Told Me combines Harmer’s tangled personal history with insights into the worlds of Australian comedy and media. It is a singular life studded with impressive achievements.

You can find an extended version of this review in my blog post ‘Casting an Image: Wendy Harmer’s Lies My Mirror Told Me’: https://tessawooldridge.com/2023/11/2...

[Susan C · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admit to being a fan of the Big Gig back in the late 80's. I admired Wendy Harmer's monologs although it was probably Jean Kitson and the Doug Anthony All Stars who caught my attention. Up until then I had no idea who she was. In the meantime since, I'd come across her several times and admired her wit and timing, as well as her advocacy for those with cleft lips and palates.

Fast forward to the end of 2023 when she was the last author to present in an author series hosted by my local library. It was also the end of a very busy time at work, so I took the opportunity to go thinking this could be fun, and it was. It was one of those evenings when there was laughs a plenty and I felt that Wendy could have spoken and made us laugh all night, not just the hour allocated.

Then I read the book and what stuck me was the pain, mostly emotional, she endured throughout her childhood. Come to do with what her face looked like, other due to a mother who basically ran away, an emotionally distant father, and a step-mum who was a little nutso. Having said all that, all those people made her and she acknowledges that. What is clear in the book is that she's had a lot of luck but has also worked hard and taken risks. Sometimes its worked, other times it hasn't.

Overall its an interesting book, with an abundance of funny stories.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was first introduced to Wendy Harmer on The Big Gig. I'd just started uni and having a show such as this was eye opening and cutting edge. From then, I was a fan of Harmer's comedy even seeing her live a couple of times.

This memoir is interesting to a point. I never realised Harmer had a harelip - I always just thought it was a scar or something - it was completely irrelevant to me as I enjoyed her humour. Her early childhood memories, her school memories and her early journalism working experiences were really good. One anecdote that stands out is her job was meeting the last train from Melbourne to get the weather to put in the paper for the next day - how cool is that?

I also found really interesting her early stand up experiences and getting the Big Gig on TV.

What I didn't enjoy quite so much was the later memoirs of her career - not that it was bad but I just don't have much knowledge or interest in the politics and machinations of commercial radio - though I did pause to remember the times when Harmer shared about asking all cars to turn their lights on on the morning of 9/11.

[Bronwen Heathfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an accomplished and interesting intelligent woman. I found this fascinating. Wendy Harmer is ‘of my vintage’ but I had no idea how much she has done. I only knew of her stand up days in Melbourne, particularly the Big Gig, The Gillies Report and seeing her in the early days of the Comedy Festival (Luna Park??). Her memoir is fascinating- from a childhood of remote Victorian towns, journalism, comedy, radio and writing. Such a trailblazer and feminist. She writes extremely well and although I’m not a fan of commercial breakfast radio good on her for doing it before women were regularly part of the team. You don’t need to be a fan to enjoy this book.

[Lee McKerracher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wendy Harmer takes you inside her world revealing all of the challenges she's had to face along the way. Challenges that most likely made her stronger and able to deal with a career in stand-up and radio.

Her approach to life has been to give everything a go, tuck the fear to one side and barge on in. She will either sink or swim and most times, she swam and raced ahead.

It's an honest and open account of her life but one that gives hope and shows that no matter what you face, there can be a way through, although sometimes the right path may be hard to find.

[Wendy Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable, funny memoir that didn't take its subject too seriously. I particularly enjoyed the re-telling of Wendy's often difficult early life; her early days in journalism and the start of her career in comedy. Not being from Sydney, stories from the Sydney radio scene, that she was a long-time part of, didn't hold quite the same interest for me. I came away with a lot of admiration for Harmer's guts, ambition, sheer determination and joie de vivre.

[Jo Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so much. I bought it so I would have it in time for the tour she is currently undergoing to promote it. I have adored Wendy as an entertainer since her days on The Big Gig. A frank, funny, raw and beautiful story from an amazingly strong woman. A trail blazer in her genre. Highly recommend.

[Julene Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. She has an excellent writing style which probably comes from her teacher father and working on newspapers. I have admired her for a long time and bought the book exactly for that reason. Wendy's comedic talent shines out of the pages.
Her life hasn't been easy but luckily she had the ability to "get on with it".

[Karin Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh wow what a story and a life! (So far)
From Wendy's early days to her youth, careers in journalism, comedy, television and radio.. to marrying her soul mate Brendan and having children later in life I enjoyed every page. Highly recommended reading.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always a fab of Wendy since I was a young child, an honor to read this and learn more about her upbringing and experiences, the good and the bad in such open honesty. Congratulations Wendy on another excellent book and for being so raw.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could only imagine the experiences Wendy had to become the person and comedian she is before reading this autobiography. Learning about what she had to overcome in her childhood only increases my respect for her

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read for trips down memory lane for Wendy's many lives but especially regarding her comedy career and the Big Gig. Poignant and nicely observed moments from Wendy Harmers life made me tear up. ( See the Girl Guides episode)
Thanks for such an enjoyable book.